Guest Opinion: ‘Bible science’ misses the point of validation
by Dr. Gilbert D. Shapiro
Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona June 6, 2007
On May 28, the $27 million, 60,000-square-foot Creation Museum opened in Kentucky. Its goal is to convince the public that the pronouncements in a specific holy book, written thousands of years ago about the history of the universe and life on Earth, have more scientific credibility than modern science.
Museum founders are confident that "Bible science" can confirm that our universe, along with humans in their present form, were created in six literal days, that we and dinosaurs coexisted and that the Noah's Ark tale was for real.
Indeed, the motto at the entrance should read, "Here, credible science will never get in the way of a good story." This project is the brainchild of Ken Ham, a former Australian schoolteacher who immigrated to the United States and began working on this project about 20 years ago.
Ham challenges evolutionists, "How do you gain knowledge of the past when you weren't there?" Asking this question immediately calls into question Ham's academic and intellectual credentials — he doesn't know how this research is done? His position is that more scientific confidence can be placed in the "divinely inspired" ancient writings of men — concerning events, ironically, for which they themselves "weren't there" — rather than in the 21st-century, highly reliable, investigative tools of modern science.
To Australia's credit and our shame, Ham was correct when he stated, "You'd never find something like this in Australia. If you want to get the message out, it has to be here."
He was highlighting the sad fact that a Gallup poll released in March showed that an amazing 47 percent of Americans believe that the universe and all earthly species were supernaturally created in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. This embarrassing statistic speaks loudly that many of our fellow citizens lack scientific understanding.
While the details of evolution are hotly debated among scientists, there is no legitimate controversy about whether or not global and human evolution occurred. It remains the overarching, yet-to-be-falsified bedrock of such sciences as biology, geology, paleontology and astronomy. Each of these disciplines has independently confirmed the fact that our universe is billions of years old and that humans are the product of millions of years of evolutionary development.
Dr. Jason Lisle, a creation scientist who is in charge of the Creation Museum's planetarium program, said, "Science comes out of a biblical worldview. We don't try to prove the Bible from outside evidence. We accept the Bible as a presupposition."
By contrast, the scientific method would demand the following protocol: "We observe that our Bible makes statements about our origins. Our hypothesis is that these statements are true. We must now scientifically validate our hypothesis."
This is the point where science and creationism part company. Real scientists, relying on evidence derived from provable natural laws, have determined that the evolutionary model, not the biblical one, is the only model that is scientifically supported. Creationists unashamedly start with their conclusion that the Bible is literally true, and then work backward to support this predetermined conclusion. Without scientific proof of the supernatural, the foundation of the Bible, no scriptural truth claims about the history of the universe can be scientifically validated.
While the Center for Inquiry Community of Southern Arizona supports freedom of speech and religion, it is our central mission to defend and promote reason and science. We cannot allow the misunderstanding of the scientific process to go unchallenged. The idea that all of science is contained between the covers of a single book is certainly attractive. Unfortunately, it is wrong.
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